


trust fall

by kangeiko



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Arc Reactor Issues, Canon Injuries, Hurt Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes Needs a Hug, M/M, Post-Iron Man 1, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-02-27 20:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18746731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: It could have been worse. Tony might have decided he’d do this on his own.





	trust fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



> Many thanks to phnelt for an awesome beta!

This call. This _fucking call._

James can’t fucking believe it.

There was a small part of him that savagely wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t picked up; if he’d let the phone go to voicemail. If he’d seen Pepper’s caller ID and thought, _actually, I can’t deal with whatever Tony has done right now,_  and left the phone to ring out.

He’d come pretty close to it in the past. He’d never quite managed it, of course. A small part of him had never quite been able to stop thinking that the call would be Pepper calling to inform him that Tony’s body had been found, that it had been an accident, that Tony hadn’t meant it… (and James, ignoring the phone, letting it ring out and go to voicemail, so all he’d know of it would be a choked off message, a _call me back, James. Something’s happened to Tony,_  and he’d have never forgiven himself for that, never.)

He wondered occasionally what it meant that his subconscious had decided -- even before all the shit went down with the Ten Rings -- that it would be Pepper who’d care enough about Tony to call him, Pepper and not Stane. Never Stane, not even back when Tony had been a scrawny kid barely out of his last growth spurt and Stane had been so busy draping an arm around him for the cameras that no one had noticed the bastard tying that noose around Tony’s neck.

 _You worry too much, honeybear,_  Tony had said to him years ago, back when James had been probably a bit too drunk for his own good and had tried to explain his reasoning behind never turning his phone off. _What do you imagine is going to happen?_

There was, it turned out, no easy way to say _I’m fairly certain your second OD wasn’t accidental,_  and so James had said nothing.

At least this time Tony had realized that he couldn’t do this on his own; at least he hadn’t only realized he needed help when his chest was half-disassembled on the workstation.

(When Tony had OD’d that second time, he’d been found by the librarian. The little shit had decided to shoot up at the fucking _library._  James was gonna have that carved on his fucking tombstone: _too stupid to live.)_

“Tony, seriously. Wouldn’t this be better in a hospital?” _Wouldn’t that be kinder to my nerves? Have pity on an old - OK, middle-aged - man, Tones, c’mon._ Tony’s breathing was labored and far too shallow for comfort. James frowned and pressed his free hand against Tony’s neck, feeling for the pulse. Too fast, rabbiting beneath his fingertips. “Tony -”

“No hospital,” Tony wheezed, white-faced. He was bare to the chest, his torso carefully shaved and prepared, swabbed down with iodine and disinfectant, a mainline in the back of his left hand. He’d opted for local anesthetic - on the logic that the last time he’d had any of this done, they hadn’t bothered with any sort of pain relief - and decided against sedation until later on in the process. (What ‘later on’ meant had been left up to JARVIS’s discretion, and James was _really_ hoping that JARVIS knew when to override Tony’s patented ‘I’m perfectly fine!’ bullshit.) Tony’s entire attention was on the monitor and the exploded cross-section of the reactor casing. It was floating loosely across the video of James’s hand, buried wrist-deep in Tony’s chest. Tony had removed the reactor himself - it was sat on the nearby workbench, beside the new reactor waiting to be re-inserted - and James hadn’t fought him on it. “I have full - _uh_ \- faith in you, honeybear.”

“That’s cute,” James snapped, furious despite himself. “‘Cause faith is all that’s required here, right?” And not, say, a _surgeon._ Or perhaps an engineer. (Probably both, if James thought about this rationally. Probably an entire team of highly trained, specialized - yeah, OK, it made perfect sense why Tony was doing this himself. That didn’t make James feel any better about it.) He stomped down on the rage hard, smoothing out his facial expression. “Sorry, just, you know. Tense.”

James was fairly certain that they should have had this conversation before. Before James agreed to this, and certainly before they’d actually embarked on it. Of course, given past form, getting an hour’s notice of what Tony planned was the equivalent of a full-page ad in the NYT for anyone else.

“It’s OK, Rhodey. And… given my other options, I’m choosing faith, yeah,” Tony said, his voice even more labored. His eyes met James. He swallowed at whatever he saw there. “Can we have this conversation afterwards?”

“Oh, you bet your sweet ass we’re having this conversation afterwards,” James said, but he gentled his voice as he said it. Tony’s pulse was still frighteningly fast and his color had passed ‘pale’ and was approaching ‘bleached bone’. “How’re you doing?”

Tony couldn’t seem to decide which was worse - looking up into James’s face, or down at where James’s hand was inside his chest. Both seemed guaranteed to make things worse. For the most part he kept his gaze rigidly fixed on the nearby monitor. “Nearly there. I think there’s a - you see it?”

James followed his gaze to the schematics on the monitor. “Yeah.” He could feel it as well as see it, a slight indentation in the otherwise smooth metal. “OK, I think I have it.” He took his free hand away from Tony’s neck and braced it on his collarbone, the fingers of his other hand curving inside the reactor casing to rest gently on the release mechanism. “Ready?”

Tony looked up at him and managed a smile. “For you? Always.” He swallowed. “Go ahead.”

James glanced back at the external bypass machine and the accompanying monitor, checking the containment field that would substitute for the casing was holding. It wasn’t as rigid as the casing, and it would allow some gentle displacement - it would have to, to accommodate the new casing being inserted - but it would prevent the sort of damage that could reasonably be expected to accompany a hole the size of a 1lr soda bottle suddenly left bare in a person’s chest. Most importantly, it would prevent the movement of the ribs, and the remnants of the sternum, the casing was supporting while they completed the exchange.

The monitor bleeped the all-clear at him. (For a given definition of all-clear, which in no way implied that what he was about to do was advised or remotely safe.) The over-ride was in place, allowing the mechanism to be deactivated inside Tony temporarily, without pushing him into cardiac arrest. “Like a bypass,” Tony had explained cheerfully as he’d outlined the procedure, missing the way James had blanched at the thought. “I’ll be hooked up to that the entire time, so even if there’s a problem, it won’t affect my cardiac rhythm, don’t worry.”

 _It might not give him a heart attack,_ James thought, feeling the prickle of terror down the back of his neck, _but it is absolutely guaranteed to give me one. Please be right about this, Tony. Please._

“On the count of three. One -” Tony breathed out slowly, and James triggered the mechanism.

The reactor casing folded inwards around James’s hand like a collapsing paper crane, submerged by the sudden expansion of bared tissue as the entire mechanism was carefully removed. The containment field - just - held. Tony’s lungs visibly expanded as he took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. His heart -

James stared down into the exposed cavity, at the pulsing flesh he knew must be the threadbare cushion for Tony’s heart. One centimeter of flesh between Tony’s heart and fresh air. Between his heart and James’s _hand._

“Tony,” James said faintly. “Tony, my god.” He still had the collapsed casing around his hand. It made a hideous metallic sound as he dumped it, unseeing on the worktable, his attention wholly on Tony. On what had been done to Tony’s chest. He couldn’t look away from the rapid pulse, the flex of the thin amount of muscle left protecting the pericardial sac. The pericardial cavity hadn’t been merely enlarged. It had been butchered. “What the hell did they do to you?”

“Yinsen did the best he could,” Tony said, _defended,_ as if there was any defense for James being able to see his heart beat, open and exposed in a way that should never be allowed. “Rhodey, come on, don’t lose it now.”

“I’m not losing it,” James said, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and pulled himself together, managing a smile down at Tony’s pale face. “Just impressed with the mess in here, that’s all. OK, the field is holding. The vent is stable. I’m going in with the replacement casing.” He wanted to put his hands on Tony, to reassure him. But scrubbed as he was - and even with no actual surgery involved beyond the temporary exposure of the surgical site, safely protected by the containment field from any risk of infection - it was still impossible for him to do anything other than to keep his hands where he needed them and focus. “Let’s hope I don’t forget anything in here, yeah?”

Tony huffed a heavy breath that might have been intended as a laugh. “JARVIS is keeping count, don’t worry.”

 _Don’t worry._ As if it was that simple.

“JARVIS? Wanna reassure my honeybear he’s not gonna accidentally kill me?”

“Not accidentally, no, sir.” JARVIS sounded as dry as it was possible for him to get. He, too, must be feeling the strain, James thought.

James shook his head and picked up the replacement casing. It was, as all other things Tony designed, a thing of beauty. Sleek and gorgeous, and possibly a hairsbreadth slimmer than the previous one, it slid seamlessly into the chest cavity, nudging the exposed red flesh out of the way to seat itself against the carved-open sternum. The ribs framed it like a pair of hands accepting a sword, closing snugly around the metal as it slid in, and in, and in, until James felt his head swim from how much there was of it. “Tony,” he whispered, his lips numb. “Tony, talk to me.”

There was a long silence, during which time James fought the urge to look away from what he was doing and check on Tony. _Why isn’t he answering? Why -_ Tony was frighteningly still, his muscles the sort of lax that spoke of sedation, or - _no, don’t think about that,_  he thought desperately, his mouth flooded with bile. No alarms were going off, so presumably -

Another moment of silence during which James aged approximately 48 years, and JARVIS finally spoke instead. “Sir is within expected parameters,” he said gently in James’s ear. “I have administered sedation as pre-agreed. The new casing is angled fractionally, please refer to the projection and correct.”

If James had known that sedation would leave Tony as a limp ragdoll in James’s arms, his conversation with JARVIS would have gone slightly differently, _and maybe I wouldn’t have come so close to losing my shit._  He bit his lip and glanced at the monitor, noting the red lines. “JARVIS, you and me are gonna have a conversation after all this,” he muttered, and nudged the casing as gently as he dared. The X-ray and the diagrammatic overlay abruptly aligned and flashed green.

“Alignment achieved,” JARVIS murmured. “Please activate the sealing trigger.”

Despite himself - despite _JARVIS_ \- James checked the monitor again, noting the perfect alignment and the glowing green outline. He hesitated a beat, two. “Activating now.”

The button depressed, and he held his hand in place, not moving at all as the sealing mechanism glowed red-hot around the circumference of the casing, ringing his wrist in reflected heat.

“Sealing complete. Please remain in position for another three minutes to ensure the mechanism is stable.”

James stayed perfectly still, counting it down. A bead of sweat worked its way down his face, disappearing into the neckline of his sterile smock. His free hand, still braced against Tony’s collarbone, twitched gently with tremors even as the hand he had inside Tony remained utterly immobile.

He wasn’t a surgeon, but this didn’t require a surgeon. He wasn’t an engineer - not in the way that Tony was, anyway - but this didn’t require an engineer. Every step of it was monitored and administered by JARVIS, from the anesthetic through to the terrifying sealing process, complete with the smell of burning flesh. Every element was something that Tony had designed and worked through and approved, and James had no doubt at all that if Tony had been able to do this entirely by himself, he would have.

Pepper had said as much to him when she’d phoned him, explaining in a near-broken voice that Tony needed his help to replace the reactor casing. James had listened with a sort of distant horror to her explanation. “It was damaged,” she’d said, the line - or her voice - cracking. “The original casing was pretty fragile anyway, and it wasn’t installed under ideal conditions.” Which in this case meant in a cave in Afghanistan, and little wonder, then, that the casing required replacing.

Just why it required replacing in such a rush was another matter entirely. “And he can’t put this off for another week because…”  _And why didn’t he ask you,_  he thought, but he already knew the answer to that. Tony had told him a little while later, after James had seen Pepper’s little gift to him; _‘Proof Tony Stark Has A Heart’ - that’s cute, Tony. Seems a bit forward, though. Anything you want to tell me?_

And the whole sorry tale had come out in dribs and drabs, with no real detail but one clear message: there was no way Tony would put Pepper in that position again.

(James was different. James had fed Tony salt water to make him vomit up whatever he’d taken, and waited with him while the ambulance got there and took him away to have his stomach pumped for real, and watched him like a hawk for months afterwards, half unable to believe that it hadn’t been too late. That all James would have to do to ensure that Tony was fine was watch him every minute of every day.

No wonder the second time - the time James refused to believe was accidental - had been injectables and not pills, and had been not in the dorm but in the locked bathroom of the MIT main library.)

Pepper had been silent for so long James had wondered if the line had disconnected. “Hello?”

“Obad- Stane damaged it,” she’d said, clipped. “He - when he took the reactor out, and then… during the fight. It was - it was damaged.” She hadn’t said anything else, but then, she hadn’t needed to. James had been at Stark Tower eighteen minutes later, a hasty voicemail left for his aide to clear his schedule for the foreseeable future. He will need to answer for that, probably - top brass never took kindly to people going off on their own, however much notice they managed - but that was a problem he’d deal with later. _Much_ later.

For now...

“The sealing mechanism is stable,” JARVIS said softly. “You may withdraw your hand whenever you are ready.”

“Right.” He hesitated for another moment, then carefully withdrew. The widest part of the his hand touched the edge of the mechanism and he froze, but the sealant did not seem disturbed and the casing did not move. “JARVIS?”

“There was no damage,” JARVIS reported. “The casing _is_ stable, sir.”

 _He’s rattled,_ James thought. JARVIS generally did not stick to rigid formality with him, but would occasionally lapse into it whenever Tony was upset or injured as more of his processing power was devoted to identifying the source of the problem and addressing it.

He tugged his hand free and paused. The bypass monitor continued to beep reassuringly at him, signalling a cardiac rhythm within acceptable parameters.

Tony’s eyes were closed.

“Tony?” James whispered. The hand he had on Tony’s collarbone twitched, then slid up to cradle the back of his neck. “Tone?”

Tony’s eyes opened slowly, blinking up at James, his gaze unfocused. “Hey,” he slurred, and seemed to run out of words. His pupils were enormous, drowning his eyes in black.

“Hey,” James said. His thumb stroked the nape of Tony’s neck, watching him shiver. “You doing OK?”

“Oh, just good, you know. JARVIS, you did the thing?”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said. “Please focus on Colonel Rhodes until the procedure is completed.”

Tony nodded, his head moving like a doll whose strings had been cut, jerkily and without any control. “You’re lucky you’re so pretty,” he mumbled, and managed an unsteady smile. “Giving me something to look at.”

His skin was clammy, James noted, and his color was still too washed out. James’s gaze flickered to the monitor at the side, checking again that the readings were within acceptable levels.

“Hey,” Tony murmured, and James’s gaze snapped back to him.

“Yeah?”

“I’m good, honeybear. Just the last bit left. Do that for me, would you?”

James swallowed, reaching for the new - all improved - arc reactor. Tony had turned it around in less than a week, that and the new casing. James didn’t want to think about how long it must have taken him to make the original prototype back in Afghanistan, how long Tony had spent with whatever Yinsen had been able to scrounge up lodged in his chest. He still didn’t understand how Tony had survived it, how he’d been spared an agonizing death drowning in the stench of infection as his body succumbed to the trauma that had been inflicted on it.

How Tony had survived it all a second time, left helpless and paralyzed with his glowing heart in Stane’s hands, a hole in his chest where his trust had used to be.

“Sure, Tony,” he whispered. He had to let go of Tony to install the reactor, reaching inside him with one hand while the other held the mechanism steady. He brushed his thumb once more against the too-pale skin of Tony’s cheek and got in position, reaching back inside the terrifying cavity, hearing the monitor’s beep accelerate. “Tony, look at me. Come on, Tones, just focus on my face. Just the last bit to go.”

Tony stared up at him, helpless and immobile in the grip of the sedation and the anesthesia, his pulse accelerating in terror as James reached back inside him, the reactor held high. His gaze did not move from James’s face, even as the jolt of the connection went through him, the reactor reconnecting.

“Transferring control to the reactor now,” JARVIS said, and the core in James’s hands lit up.

Tony blinked, his lower lip trembling. “Rhodey?” He murmured. James could see the reactor’s glow reflected in his eyes.

“I’m here. You’re OK, Tony.” The reactor slid home, twisted into position with a sickening _click._ “I have you. You’re OK.”

“All systems online,” JARVIS said in James’s ear. “Sir’s vital signs indicate he is distressed. Should I administer additional sedative?”

Tony’s eyes were glazed and wet, his body trembling as best it could. James didn’t have to be a genius to guess where he was at. What sedatives would do to him in this condition, terrified and disoriented, his nightmares made flesh.

“No, JARVIS. That’s fine. I’ll take it from here.” Keeping Tony calm and focused was the most important thing. He pressed his fingers to Tony’s cheekbone, squatting so that they were eye-level and Tony wasn’t looking up at him. “Hey, you.” He pulled the nearby stool across with one foot and slid it beneath his rump, seating himself half-bent over Tony.

“Hey,” Tony managed. He was, if anything, even paler than before. “See? Piece of cake.” His throat worked as he swallowed drily.

“Yeah.” James traced the edge of Tony’s cheekbone with his forefinger. The skin was cold and clammy to the touch, a thin sheen of sweat across the top of Tony’s lip. “I want you to stay still for me, OK?”

“Not a surgery,” Tony protested. “Nothing was... “ He searched for the word, frowning when it didn’t come to him. “Moved,” he decided at last.

 _Unlike last time,_  was the unspoken ending to that sentence. _Moved,_  like his heart had been, like his ribs had been - bits left behind in a cave in Afghanistan - to make space for the magnet that needed that space more urgently than anything else. James swallowed and took a moment to get his voice under control. “Sure. But it wasn’t fun either, huh? So let’s sit here for a little bit and make sure everything is OK. JARVIS will arrange for some refreshments when you’re ready, won’t you, JARVIS?”

“Of course,” JARVIS said.

“So we can just sit here for a bit until you’re ready to move.” He brushed back a lock of Tony’s hair from his face. “Gonna have to wipe you down first, anyway.”

“Hmmm?”

“You’re covered in iodine. And, you know, other gross bits.”

Tony exhaled a laugh at that, wincing at the movement in his chest. “Yeah, Pepper thought it was pus.”

James could feel all the blood drain from his face at the thought. Tony hadn’t told him _that_  detail when he’d mumbled his way through the reactor installation. “The lubricant?”

“Yeah. She was… really freaked out.” He grimaced. “It was just swapping out the reactor. I didn’t mean to frighten her, you know, but I couldn’t reach inside to -”

 _I couldn’t reach,_ as if this was something that needed excusing. He couldn’t reach inside his own chest to swap out the thing that kept his heart beating, and so he’d needed a little help with that. _I couldn’t reach,_ as if he’d have done it himself, _by_ himself, if he could.

“Hey,” James interrupted. He still hadn’t taken his hand away from Tony’s face, stroking gently. The smear of iodine wasn’t doing either of them any favors but he couldn’t move away to clean his hands. Later, he could do it later. After Tony’s breathing evened out; after he stopped trembling in James’s arms. After the terror faded from his eyes. “You don’t need to explain, Tony. I know that…” He hesitated. “You want to be self-sufficient. I get that. Hell, you know I support you in that. But not for _everything,_ Tones. Not for _this.”_ His thumb slipped down to rest against the gentle swell of Tony’s lower lip. “You understand?”

Tony swallowed. His eyes were still wet and little droplets clung to his lashes as he blinked. His breath stuttered in his chest even as his lips pursed into an attempt at a smile. “Sure, Rhodey.”

“Tony.” James leaned in, pressing his forehead against Tony’s. _”Not for this,”_ he said again, stressing each word. Tony tasted of sour sweat and iodine, his breath fragile and rattling against James’s lips as he exhaled. James sat back, his hand sliding back down to cup Tony’s neck. “You didn’t want to go to a hospital?”

A hesitation. Tony shook his head. “They’d have insisted on general anesthetic. And I couldn’t let… not after Obie…” He shivered. “I needed someone I could trust.”

James had figured on it being something like that. He nodded gently. “Sure. I get that.” He tilted his head. “Do you want to sleep for a bit?”

“No.” But his eyes were sliding shut as the adrenaline wore off and the fear ebbed inch by precious inch. He was sliding into sleep even as he said it, his muscles going lax in James’s arms. “‘M tired. Will you stay?” He reached out his hand blindly, and James took it in his own.

“Sure, Tony. I’ll stay.” He leaned down again and pressed his lips against the faint stubble at Tony’s jaw. “I’m right here.”

On James’s right, DUM-E beeped gently and help up the blanket he’d clearly fetched from the cot in the far corner.

“Is that for Tony? That’s very thoughtful of you. Hey, Tones, DUM-E brought you a blanket.” He opened it up and wrapped it loosely around Tony’s hips, leaving the chest area uncovered for the moment.

Tony smiled at this, his eyes half-lidded. His fingers twitched on the rough wool of the blanket. “He’s a good boy,” he murmured drowsily. His hand reached out across the fabric, palm up.

James caught it and held it in his own. “Sleep,” he said softly. “I’m here.”

Tony nodded, his fingers tightening around James’s.

DUM-E beeped inquisitively, laying his claw against Tony’s leg.

“He’s gonna be fine, buddy. You wanna help me look after him?”

DUM-E nodded at this, laying his claw down again. Like a dog might when its human was injured, James thought, and something in him ached at the thought. “Good boy,” he whispered. His fingers tightened around Tony’s.

There was a smudge of iodine against Tony’s lower lip. James reached up and touched a fingertip against it, watching the color slowly return to Tony’s face. Tony turned into James’s hand in his sleep, his lashes fanned out across his cheek. The glow from the reactor cast an unnatural light against his cheeks.

James couldn’t look away. What had it been like for him, to realize that Stane had turned on him? To have had Stane rip out the reactor? To have had Stane hold it just as James had held it, high enough for Tony to see it being ripped out?

And here Tony was, after all of that, sleep-lax in James’s arms.

No, no one was ever going to hurt Tony again. James would make sure of it. He’d let them carve out his own heart first rather than let Tony live through that again.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Let my CO know that I need to take some emergency leave for the rest of the week, would you?” They’d take it out of his hide when he reported back, of course. _Well, let them._  Some things were worth it. _Tony_  was worth it.

“Of course, sir.”

He turned his attention back to Tony. _I’m right here, Tony. For as long as you need. Forever, if you want that, if you let me._

James’s eyes traced the lines of Tony’s face, watching Tony relax a little more with every breath. Watching him sleep. Watching him _trust._

*

fin


End file.
